Persons attempting to find a motive will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot will be shot.

Monday, February 1, 2016

How To Submit

February is many things besides Black History Month, the
home of President’s Day and Valentine’s Day, and the longest four weeks of the
year.

But for playwrights, it’s only one thing: National Rejection
Letter Month.

The month when playwrights around the country breathe a sigh
of relief when their e-mail inbox and their letter mailbox is overflowing with discount offers and flyers for other
people’s plays which aren’t half as clever or moving as theirs are. Or bills. Or IRS audit notifications. Or anything except letters from theatres they sent a play to six months ago.

The month when they dread opening e-mails or letters and see
the words “we received nearly a million applications,” “our
selection process was extremely difficult,” “we
appreciate your interest,” “we read your play with
great interest,” “we wish you the best of luck,” and those three killer words which
show up in every single one of them, “unfortunately,” and “we
regret.”

A few weeks ago, I was reading the January issue of Poetry
Magazine, in which Vidyan Ravinthiran, in reviewing Jon Silkin’s Collected
Poems, talks about the “all-important Stamped Addressed Envelope” as part
of the submission process.

The SAE has always
been, I suppose, a gesture of status-confirming humility—you provide the editor
with all necessary postage, then your spurned works return in an envelope on
which you’ve written your own name, almost as if you’ve rejected yourself;
nowadays, of course, there’s often a website telling you “How to Submit.”

"Almost as if you’ve rejected yourself." Oh man, did that get under my armor. So I pulled out my notebook and wrote a sonnet, which I read
to my writer’s group, after which I squirreled it away to be posted and shared
today. Because it’s National Rejection letter Month. And it’s all about
submission, baby.